Surfers Paradise, QLD, no longer the place of childhood memories

Gold Coast promo from 19870:52

Take a step back in time to 1987 and re-visit Queensland's Gold Coast.

June 23rd 2014

3 years ago

OF ALL once vintage-perfect Australian holiday destinations I feel most sorry for, the Gold Coast wins hands-down.

Poor glitzy Surfers, once the princess of places in the wind-chilled minds of anyone whose postcode stared with a 3, is more like a bedraggled bridesmaid hobbling home at 6am from the hen’s night with her platinum wig half off and her polyester mini-dress muddied.

As I was considering where, in my dreams, we’d go this school holidays I realised it’s not the ‘Beautiful one minute, perfect the next’ Queensland hype that spoils the chances of the good old Goldy ever meeting expectations; it’s something much simpler yet more difficult to top, childhood memories.

The colours used to be brighter.Source:News Corp Australia

For a bunch of years we went to Surfers every September for a week or so after my grandparents made the very cosmopolitan decision to move up there in the late 1970s (Granny had shingles and the climate was said to be good for her). For me, as for so many Victorians, the place exists in memories in a kind of shimmering haze.

Those long days on that clean, endless beach, with its champagne foam and its winter heat. The vast, blue-sky views from the level nine on the 11-storey ‘skyscraper’ where my grand-folks lived. The tumbledown surf club right next door with its straggly red hibiscus.

The down-home novelty of Putt Putt golf, the luxury of having the musical gelati van drive right up to the beach (with exotic flavours like mandarine!); walking barefoot for a visit to stylish Cavill Avenue.

Schoolies don’t help the trashy vibe.Source:News Limited

The place was part retro RSL-and-bowls-hat gentility, part stopover for the halter-neck jet set. There were so many things you rarely saw at home; avocado, mango, clouds of technicolour, screeching rainbow lorikeets — water-skiers in a human pyramid formation!

It may have been because we always went there when Melbourne was at its rainy greyest but I remember the colours being brighter, the light being more radiant, the energy of the place being at once more relaxed, as well as more exhilarating.

It’s become a little bit artificial. Picture: Phalinn.Source:Flickr

All those Combi-driving beach bums with their sun-bleached manes just seemed healthier and higher on life. And look, it’s always a gamble when you go back and revisit a place that you enjoyed as a kid and still treasure your memories of. It’s even more of a gamble when you take your own kids there, full of a hopeful sense of circles closing and of a little bit of personal history repeating. Poor, bogan-ready Surfers was just never going to cut it.

Then, it had all the novelty of that once-a-year visit out for a restaurant meal, now it is the hot chips of travel destinations — and they’ve been sitting under heater lamps for quite some time. It all feels so artificial, even the birds have taken off. It is so cold and man-made it’s about as sensual as a tandoori tan.

Even the life guards have had a makeover. Picture: Phalinn.

The whole place has been supersized, and put on ‘roids, except for the beach, which as well as erosion is overshadowed by that forest of zombie towers.

What was once so glamorous — little details like the vintage neon sign at the Pink Poodle Hotel — now just feels trashy and so way overdone. What was once a little bit country and a little bit rock n’ roll feels like an unhappy marriage between Malibu and Vegas, without the X-factor of either.

The surf club 2.0 version is so throbbing with pokies, flat-screens, glare and doof-doof it must have a power bill like the Death Star’s. Like so much on the Goldy, it’s had a total charm-ectomy.

Sorry for this extended lament about what many people may just consider progress, but as someone for whom Surfers was such a highlight, I feel sad that nothing seems special there, or exotic. Even the surfie blonde looks like it comes from a bottle.

Even the neon lights of the Hard Rock fail to light up.Source:News Corp Australia

What came naturally to Surfers, great relaxed holiday memories with the occasional big highlight — Sea World! — all feels so forced. Kids don’t seem to dag around on the beach for hours (they can’t after about 2pm anyway, owing to the man-made shade) now a Surfers’ “holiday” is all about manufactured fun.

Despite the shiny ad campaigns, the place seems to have forgotten what it wants to be. It still flogs its outdoorsy sun, surf n’ sand brand, but it bends over backwards to grab a buck from every stubbie-smashing backpacker, schoolie or toolie looking for a bit of discount clubbing fun.

Still, after all this grumpy whining (sorry), I can finish with one authentic upbeat comment; thankfully, apart from Currumbin, there is one experience still up at Surfers that any Aussie child can love just much as their old school-Surfers nostalgic parent. Thank God for Sea World, with its human skiing pyramids — where the sunny fun still shines.